The blog of fantasy author Shanna Swendson. Read about my adventures in publishing and occasionally life.

Monday, March 07, 2016

Resisting the Nap Urge

I suspect it will take an act of will and a lot of tea to get much work done today. There's a triple whammy of several early mornings in a row, plus a yoga class this morning that wore me out, plus a rainy day. Even as I sit upstairs in my office, I can feel the pull of my bed from downstairs. Just a teensy nap won't hurt, will it?

I'm heading into another busy stretch of programmed weekends. Most of it is fun stuff, but it's still stuff on the calendar. It's that time of year when choir kicks into high gear. I've got the solo in the choir anthem this Sunday, then next Sunday the children's choir sings, and then there's the Good Friday service and three Easter services. The weekend after Easter may be collapse time.

But with Downton Abbey over, that frees up some TV time. I found the ending satisfying, though I had minor issues with the outcome. In too many cases, the romantic relationships were more "tell" than "show." In the first couple of seasons, Matthew and Mary had enough interaction for us to see how well they fit. One of the interim guys also seemed to generate some real sparks, and she even lowered her guard with him. With the final guy, while their relationship seemed okay in the finale, in all the lead up to it we barely saw them interact. There were more scenes of other characters talking about how perfect they were for each other than there were of them being perfect together.

Then they may have gone a wee bit overboard with pairing off just about everyone, or at least hinting at who they'd be paired off with. The world isn't Noah's Ark. You can end a story without everyone having the perfect mate. I actually was kind of pulling for Mary to remain single. She'd never been overly enthused about the idea of marriage. She loved Matthew, and she had the much-needed heir, and after that I could have imagined her being happily "married" to the estate.

I may rewatch the first couple of seasons someday. That seems like a good rainy weekend activity.

Meanwhile, I was kind of meh on the Once Upon a Time midseason premiere/100th episode. In case you hadn't figured it out by now, Regina apparently really didn't like Snow White in the past. But she's a hero now (and yet, we've never seen her say she was wrong to keep trying to kill Snow White, and she's never apologized for any of that). Maybe it'll pick up again next week. This week, I got a lot of knitting done.